


The More Things Change

by zelempa



Category: due South
Genre: F/M, Flashback
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-03
Updated: 2010-06-03
Packaged: 2017-10-09 21:33:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/91826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zelempa/pseuds/zelempa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ray laughs shortly. "You don't want me to take you to a…"</p><p>It's weird, he can say anything to her on the phone, but actually sitting with her here, in the car, in the flesh, he can't bring himself to finish his sentence.</p><p>"Oh, please do," says Stella. "Could you? I've never been to a gay bar."</p><p>Same old Stella. Subtle as a jackhammer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The More Things Change

**Author's Note:**

> Because I'm a jerk, I write my first het ever for [LGBTfest](http://community.livejournal.com/lgbtfest). Prompt: "Ray knew he wasn't straight before he married, that doesn't change his feelings for Stella." Beta thanks to Yolsaffbridge.

The snow makes him late. Yeah, it's the snow--it's not that a college campus is the last place he wants to be. But it's Stella, so he goes.

She's already waiting outside by the time he parks in the dorm lot, but he doesn't feel too guilty, because she's standing in a circle of friends, smiling and laughing and touching one guy's arm all, "Oh, _stop_, Ted." Northwestern agrees with her. She looks great, even bundled up in a boxy parka and earmuffs, with red cheeks and snow in her eyelashes. Looking at her is like looking at one of those trick pictures of the two faces or the vase. One second she's Stella, the next she's a stranger, some woman.

Suddenly their dumb little friendship seems like such a joke. So they chat on the phone every now and again. So what? That's nothing. He been fooling himself, thinking he has anything in common with this beautiful, smart, confident, popular woman.

He has his hand on the key, ready to turn it, when Stella turns and looks him in the eyes, right through the windshield. She waves excitedly, "Come here!" No turning back now. He puts his glasses down on the dash and opens the door.

He tramps over to the group, hunching his shoulders partly because his leather jacket is designed to look cool rather than be warm, and partly because he's just awkward. As soon as he gets close enough, Stella reaches out and slides her arm under his, giving him a sort of arm hug. "You're here! Was the traffic awful? Oh, here, this is everybody--Jane and Lucy and Vanessa and Todd." Todd, he was close. "Everybody, this is Ray, from high school. My best friend."

That makes him grin like a dork. "Ray, from high school, my best friend" is better than "Ray, my best friend from high school."

Not that he believes he was. They're definitely closer now than they were then, even though they haven't technically seen each other in more than a month.

Two of the girls are staring at him with wide eyes and pressed-together lips like they're trying very hard not to giggle. Ray wonders how much Stella has told her friends about him.

"So, um," Todd says, nervously, "are you, like--did you ever go out?"

"Me and her? No," says Ray, laughing a little. "No, never." Okay, so she's definitely told them nothing.

"We have something in common," says the tall, short-haired girl whose name Ray forgets. She links arms with Stella. "I'm a best friend, too."

"Vanessa's my school best friend," says Stella.

Okay, so that makes it a little less impressive, then, if he's just her everywhere-except-school best friend, since school is what she mainly cares about. Well, it was a good run while it lasted.

"We met at freshman orientation," says Vanessa.

"Yeah, well," says Ray, feeling territorial. "I knew her since we were twelve, so..."

"What's your major?" Vanessa asks.

And here's where he might lose some ground. He glances at Stella as he speaks, even though it's not news to her. "I don't, ah, I don't go to college."

"He's going to be a police officer!" Stella beams. "Maybe, when I get through law school, we'll be colleagues!"

She says it like that's so great, even better than being best friends. Ray gives a modest shrug. Score one for the home team.

There's a round of hugging, which Ray stays out of, and then Stella waves a final goodbye to her school friends, takes Ray by the arm, and leads him to his car, like she owns it.

"What should we do?" Ray asks, climbing into the driver's seat. "You want to hit the old DQ? Trip down memory lane?"

"Ugh, veto," says Stella. "Let's go someplace grownups go, okay? I need a drink." Fair enough. Ray backs out into the road. "I only know campus bars. What about you? You must have a place you normally go."

Ray laughs shortly. "You don't want me to take you to a..."

It's weird, he can say anything to her on the phone, but actually sitting with her here, in the car, in the flesh, he can't bring himself to finish his sentence.

"Oh, please do," says Stella. "Could you? I've never been to a gay bar."

Same old Stella. Subtle as a jackhammer.

"There's nothing special to see," says Ray. "Seedy bars is seedy bars."

"I don't care. I feel like there's so much I don't know about you now. Take me to _your_ place."

He doesn't, because you don't take a girl like Stella to a dive like the Pit, no matter how much she says she wants it. He's not even sure it exists before two or three in the morning. He takes her to Barry's, a low-key after-work-drinks kind of place aimed at an older crowd. It's not terribly exciting, but at least everybody will be wearing a shirt.

Stella walks in ahead of him, looking from side to side with wide blue eyes. She looks more like herself now, like a nerdy kid about to open her first checking account.

"This is it?" she says.

"What'd you expect?" says Ray. "Two guys fucking in the middle of the room?"

Either he's getting more comfortable with her, or it's easier to talk in joke form.

He scans the room. A few older guys on stools, hitting on the twink bartender, a couple having a hissed argument in the corner, and the obligatory straight couple sitting up front, looking around like tourists, all proud of themselves for being edgy. Nobody he knows, and nobody he'd particularly like to know better, which is probably for the best. He doesn't really want to have to introduce Stella to anybody he's slept with--he kind of wants her to think he has higher standards than he does--and he's not here on the make. Tonight's about Stella.

"It's just that this is _nice_," she's saying. "Look, they have menus! Class-ay. You realize that implies they serve more than just beer."

"I'm never gonna live down that pool hall off I-55, am I? Listen, a place with any kind of standards would've busted those IDs in about ten seconds. We didn't have a lot of options."

Stella smiles mildly and shrugs off her coat, and suddenly she's a stranger again. She's wearing a slinky blue dress which makes it very clear that she's got (1) taste, (2) class, and (3) a perfect hourglass figure. Her sweater is falling down off her shoulders, and her skin glows golden in the flicker of the red lanterns. Her mouth is wide and dark. Her face has lost its childish roundness, and the lights make triangular shadows under her cheekbones.

Huh. Faggy atmospheric lighting works for her. Too bad for her, really.

She lays her coat gracefully over the back of a chair, humming and swaying her hips along with the tinkly piano music.

"They'll, uh, they're gonna start playing the dance music later," Ray explains, feeling like he has to apologize for the place. "It's mostly crappy disco stuff, but they've got Punk Wednesdays."

"That's not what _I_ think of when I think of dance music."

"I know what you think of." He grabs both of her hands in his, steps back, side, together. She automatically follows, and it's like they never left off, it's like their last lesson was yesterday.

"You remember," she murmurs.

He forgot what it was like to be so close to her, her little hands in his, her breath warm on his neck. She's wearing a new perfume, he doesn't recognize it, but underneath there's still that same old Stella smell, sort of a blend of girl-sweat and lilac shampoo and something deep and homey like oatmeal cookies. Dance class was always the one time he could look forward to being near her, actually touching her, and it all comes rushing back to him now, the way he used to have to fight against the urge to bury his head in her shoulder. (He was shorter then.)

"Course I remember," he says quietly.

Suddenly Stella changes, her whole attitude, the way she's carrying herself. She pulls Ray into an exaggerated tango pose, and even though they're standing closer, it feels less intimate. Her grip is lighter, her hand practically hovering above his shoulder. "But of course. How could you not?" she says, with a hint of a fake accent. "The music, the moonlight! Those long Spanish nights! Oh, dahling, it was mahvelous!"

He doesn't get this. It's like she's reminding him of an old game they used to have, but they never had one. He notices that people are starting to look at them. He takes a few more halfhearted steps, then drops her hands. She looks confused.

For something to do, he picks up the nearest menu and waves it at her. "What do you want?"

"I don't know." She takes it, but doesn't open it, just turns it over, like she doesn't know what it is, and then hands it back to him with a smile. "I'll leave it your superior judgment. Get me whatever you're having."

"Okay. I'm having a beer."

She laughs. "Don't ever change, Ray."

"You got it," he says, because, you know, what do you say to that.

When he comes back from the bar she's looking like a classic cinema pinup, just sitting there in her dress and heels, gazing off into the distance. When she takes the glass from his hand her fingertips brush his, not on purpose, not in this new fake-flirty way she has, just a normal everyday accidental kind of brush. The glass slips down about an inch in his sweaty palms.

Okay, this is getting out of hand, this thirteen-again thing. You never get over your first love, even when she never loved you back, and you're gay now.

She shoots him a questioning look, but she doesn't comment on it. Instead, she takes a dainty sip and then shoots him a saucy smile over the top of the glass. "You know what we're going to do tonight?"

"What?" says Ray, suddenly wary.

"We're going to find you a man."

Ray spits a mouthful of beer back into the glass. "No," he manages after a moment. "Fuck no. Veto."

"Why not? You don't have a boyfriend, do you? No, you would have told me. Wouldn't you have?"

"Yeah. I would have told you." He sighs. Stella had sort of become unreal to him, even though he heard from her all the time. The phone didn't seem to count. It was like getting a call from the past. He forgot she wasn't just a memory. Turns out she's a real, living, growing, changing, thinking, warm, breathing person.

"So what's the problem? Come on. That guy at the counter's cute. You think he's with that other guy?"

"The suit? No."

"How do you know? Rayyy." She hits him playfully on the shoulder. "You haven't slept with either of them already, have you?"

"No!"

He doesn't know why he's shocked by the suggestion. He's told her stuff on the phone--about the guy from the betting track, and what he used to get up to with Stevie Leary. But those conversations were late-night heart-to-hearts, both of them curled up in their own beds, whispering under the covers. This is all loud and public.

Since when is he embarrassed by this? God. It's like she's the cool gay-bar veteran, and he's the scandalized straight friend.

"I don't sleep with everybody I meet," says Ray testily. "I don't go around cruising for man flesh."

"Okay, okay. I didn't mean to make it sound like that. Cut me some slack, okay? I don't know what it's acceptable to say. They don't publish a manual for this situation."

"What, you need a manual to talk to me now? You don't need a manual. If anybody needs a manual, it's not you. You, you _get_ me," he tells her, almost like it's a threat.

"Do I? I used to, anyway."

"I haven't changed!" Ray spreads his hands in exasperation. "I'm not any different than I used to be!"

"Of course you are," says Stella calmly. "In certain ways, anyway. Who'd have ever thought of all the people in our class, you'd be the one joining the police? You always used to be my bad-influence friend. See: IDs, fake, use of."

Ray breaks into a smile. High school was fun. Okay, no, it sucked, but the Stella parts were fun. "Making you skip class. Giving you your first cigarette. I feel kind of bad about that one."

"Full disclosure, it wasn't actually my first," says Stella. "I let you think that because--well, you know. You seemed to like it."

"Yeah?" Ray laughs. "I guess I did."

"Mm-hm. You know, I sort of thought--well, I got the impression you had a little bit of a crush on me."

"Did you," says Ray, neutrally, trying not to look like his heart is beating like she's caught onto some big secret. "A little bit of a crush" is a massive understatement, but there's no point in telling her about it _now_.

"For awhile. Then, of course, you threw me over for Stevie Leary."

"Yeah, well. The truth of the fact is I only started running with him because the guys said it was faggy to have a girl best friend."

"Is that true? Oh my God. The irony is mind-boggling. Oh, have you told your parents yet? About the police, I mean," she adds quickly, "not Stevie. Last time we talked, you weren't sure how they were going to take it."

"Yeah." Ray nods. "Yeah, I told 'em."

"And?" She's already leaning back with a smug expression, like she knows what's coming next. "How'd it go?"

Ray looks away. He doesn't want to disappoint her. He does, but he doesn't. He shrugs. "Not great."

"What?" He doesn't look up, but he can hear in her voice how she's changed her expression, leaned forward.

He shrugs. "I told you my dad wouldn't like it."

"I can't imagine why not! It's a good career. It's noble and goodhearted and courageous! Not to mention union."

"Aw, my dad doesn't want me to be union. You know that. He wanted me to be, I dunno, a lawyer or mayor or something. I tell him, it's a lost cause."

"Why?" Stella says brightly. "Your sexuality doesn't have to hold you back. What you do in your private time is your own business. Just be discreet."

Ray snorts. "Yeah, sure, cause that always works out."

"It must sometimes. You just don't hear about it, for obvious reasons. You're falling prey to confirmation bias. Look, think about it. You're already interested in criminal justice. You could do even more good as a lawyer or better yet, as a judge or a politician. You know, not just dealing with one case at a time, but making policies that affect people all over the city. Maybe all over the country."

"But," says Ray, "on the other hand," and he stops, waiting for a counterpoint to occur to him. None does. Stella looks at him expectantly. He admits, "I don't want to."

"Don't want to," says Stella, in her most schoolteacherish voice, "or don't think you _can_?"

Ray rolls his eyes and half-smiles. They're arguing again, but this feels right, this feels like the kind of arguments they always used to have. Right down to Stella telling him to shape up and him whining that he doesn't wanna.

"No. Listen," he says. "I don't want to sign some paper that becomes a bill that becomes a law that might affect a bunch of people I never meet. I want to do something. I don't want to study and study the off chance I get into law school and get through it and set up a practice and take a case that means anything, when there's people out there who need help, and I could do something about it if I wasn't at the library looking up how to help people. Things happen, real things," he finishes, leaning across the table, sure he's not getting across nearly as much as he wants to. "People get hurt."

She raises an eyebrow, unconvinced, but then she drops the posture and looks down at her hands, folded neatly around the base of her glass. "All right," she says.

"All right?" Ray's surprised. "I win?"

"Yes, you win. I'm convinced." She offers him a smile, but it's sad. "You have passion for this. Well, I'm awfully glad, even if... I forgot, of course. You must have seen things. Friends beaten up..."

"What?"

"...just for being who they are..."

"Christ," says Ray. "That's what you think this is about? The gay thing? Why do you keep coming back to that?"

"Look around you!" Stella sweeps her arms, and she's right; the bar is beginning to fill up, men are beginning to pair off.

"You were the one who wanted to come here!"  
"Only because..." Stella glances off to the side, one eyebrow raised. "I think I can safely say that you started it."

"Not everything is about how fucking gay I am, okay?" Stella's cool-angry just makes Ray hot-angry. "There are more traumatic things that can happen to a person, you know. You might maybe remember a little incident at a bank one summer afternoon years ago. I dunno, maybe it didn't make an impression on you, it did on me."

He's got her now. She's looking at him again, her eyes wide, her mouth slightly open.

Then they both jump, because loud music's suddenly pumping in through the speakers. _"If I can't have you, I don't want nobody, baby!"_

They turn back to each other with the same expressions. The soundtrack doesn't matter.

Ray begins trying to explain. "When he grabbed you--when he held you by the hair--"

Stella shakes her head and points at her ear. She can't hear him.

"HE HELD YOU BY THE HAIR!" Ray shouts desperately. "HE PUT A GUN TO YOUR HEAD!"

Stella doesn't answer right away. She looks off, biting her lips. Ray feels bad for dredging up the memory.

Then she looks at him and says, simply, "YOU SAVED ME."

"You saved yourself." That's what Ray should say. He doesn't. Something in him still wants credit for that.

"HE GOT AWAY."

Stella starts to say something back, but Ray can't hear her. He leans forward, and she gets it, and does the same. They're leaning over the table, him with his hands locked on the edge and his elbows out, tense, her with her arms folded under her, looking up. Their eyes are locked.

Whatever speech Stella gave before, she simplifies it this time around. "You want to solve cases like that?"

"I want to solve _that_ case," Ray corrects. "His name's Marcus Ellery. I'm gonna catch him."

She stares at him, brows knit, eyes big, and he can't tell if she's about to cry or hit him or what. Shit. Somehow he knew it would be a bad idea to tell her. Now that he's said it, he can tell that it's weird and creepy: "I'm choosing the course of the rest of my life based on the crush I had on you in seventh grade!"

She opens her mouth, licks her lips, but she doesn't say anything. She just breathes shallow little breaths, making larger and smaller lamplight shadows under the top of her dress. Focus time, Ray. Focus. He looks at her eyes. She immediately looks away, but when she looks back, she's smiling. Okay, good sign. She moves her head even closer, keeping her eyes on his, like she wants to tell him something important. Following her lead, Ray leans in. She tilts her chin, angling her lips toward his ear, and announces, "I'll get the next round!"

She gets up and sweeps off. He lays his head down on the table and inhales deeply, needing to catch his breath. It's bad. This is bad. She's making him crazy. It's just like high school. It's worse.

Telling her he was gay might have been a little hasty.

The catch is, that was probably the best thing that could have happened to them, to their friendship. She wouldn't be here with him now if she didn't think he was her fun, safe, faggy buddy old pal.

He turns around in his seat and looks for her. She's still standing at the bar, beaming at this guy standing next to her. She says something, and he laughs. Of course. She's so beautiful, she's even turning heads at the gay bar.

She's made a good choice. The man is really good-looking, the kind of guy Ray might have picked out for himself--clean-cut with dark hair and dark eyes and red lips. He's got no style whatsoever, but underneath the dorky blue polo shirt, he's got nice muscular arms. He's young, but he looks steady and professional and well-put-together, all things Ray's not.

For the second time Stella turns and catches Ray's eye, and waves him over. Ray almost hates to go over there and ruin the picture-perfect scene. He just likes to look at them together. Stella's perfect, beautiful, shining like the North Star, as usual. Arms McCoy over there is looking all masculine and symmetrical and like he probably smells good. They just look right together. Righter than either of them would look with a skinny mascara-wearing glam-wannabe freak with hair that can't decide what it wants.

Still, it's Stella, so he goes.

As soon as he's within reach she grabs him by the hand. She nods toward her friend, and explains to Ray, "JAKE," then leans over and shouts at Jake, "THIS IS HIM! THIS IS RAY!"

So Stella wasn't turning this guy from his wayward gay ways--just the opposite. She was setting him up for Ray. She's beaming now like she expects him to be grateful. Ray sets his jaw. Sure, she doesn't know he still likes her, and wouldn't care if she did, but still. Didn't he come right out and tell her not to do this?

"SO YOU'RE ONE OF OUR BOYS IN BLUE, HUH?" says Jake.

"WHAT?" snaps Ray, a little too harshly, still looking at Stella.

"I SAID YOU'RE ONE OF OUR BOYS IN BLUE." Jake pauses. "THAT'S SOMETHING, RIGHT? THAT'S SOMETHING PEOPLE SAY?"

Jake's face is square and strong but it looks boyish with all the freckles and the blushing. For some reason that fact that he's adorable only makes Ray more annoyed. He looks back at Stella.

"WELL, I'M GOING TO GO FRESHEN UP!" she announces, ignoring his glare. She squeezes his hand then drops it. "BE RIGHT BACK!"

Like hell she will. Ray recognizes a fake-out when he sees it. He struggles to come up with a reason to go with her, even as she walks off without him.

"YOU HAVE LONG HAIR FOR A COP," says Jake.

"I, uh. I WORK VICE."

Stella heads back to the table, but then she changes course and heads for the ladies' room. It hits him that she might not like what she finds in the ladies' room of a gay bar.

"HA HA," Jake says, pronouncing his laugh clearly so that Ray can hear him over the music. "YOU'RE NOT ON DUTY NOW, ARE YOU?"

"I GOTTA GO," Ray tells him. He gestures vaguely. "CRIME HAPPENING. OVER THERE."

Stella's already closed the door behind her by the time he makes it across the room. He knocks, but of course she can't hear him over the music, so he just bursts in, averting his eyes from the stall, which is missing a door. "Stella, you might not want to, you don't know what--Stella?"

She's standing over the sink, hands pressed on either side of the basin. She looks up, and her face is flushed. Tiny droplets of water cling to her throat. Her eyes are red.

He closes the door behind him, muffling the sound from outside. "You, um. You okay?"

"I'm fine." Stella tries to put on her haughty-princess-tough-girl face, but the effect is kind of ruined by her streaked mascara and broken voice.

Ray takes a step toward her, purposefully, but then he stops short before he opens his arms. Hugging is not something they do. He settles for reaching out an awkward hand and placing it on her bare patch of shoulder as she wipes her eyes. She stiffens at his touch, probably because his hand is so clammy, but he doesn't move it away. He can't. He's stuck.

"It's harder than I thought," says Stella, still looking off to the side.

"What is?" He should have hugged her. This is worse, only having this small part of her. Her triangle of exposed skin burns beneath his hand.

"This new--friendship." Stella blinks at the sink. "This new you."

"I'm the same," Ray reminds her, with only the vaguest idea what they are talking about. She's saying she doesn't like being his best friend? He really should have hugged her when he had the chance. "It's the same friendship."

"I suppose that's the problem." She looks at him full in the face now. The blue of her blue eyes seems deeper than ever, surrounded by red. "I don't think you knew--exactly what it was before."

Ray's confused. His head is all mixed up. He puts his other hand on her other shoulder, so he's holding both of them, and nervously tightens and loosens his grip. "I don't get it."

She cocks her head and looks exasperated. This, this is familiar. This he can handle.

"Get this," she mutters, and in the next instant, she's got her hands under his elbows, she's leaning forward on tiptoes, and there's a spark, there's an electric shock, because her lips touch his.

She lets go of him and steps back just as instantly as she came on. It's over. They're not touching anymore, and except that his mouth is tingling like crazy, Ray has no proof that just happened.

Stella presses her lips together, takes in a breath, and then shakes her head and takes a step toward the door.

He grabs her arm to stop her going out and and this time he does exactly what he should have done from the beginning, not just today, but eight years ago. He pulls her close, wraps his arms around her, tilts her face up. This time she's the stupid one, her mouth hanging open like she just doesn't understand. He kisses the side of her face, kisses her neck. Finally he comes back up, leans forward, and places a gentle kiss on that open mouth.

That's when she comes alive, grabs his face in both hands, and kisses him back hard. He lets her press him back against the wall of the stall, tightening his arms around her waist as she drops hard, fast kisses on his cheeks, under his eyes.

"I don't believe it," he gasps. "I don't believe this. I thought--I always thought you were off limits."

She laughs. "You thought I was off limits!"

She slides her hand up into his mess of glam-rock hair, tilting his head. Slowly, sweetly, her lips guide his mouth open, and all at once she thrusts her tongue into his mouth. He pushes his head forward, running his tongue along hers, trying to inhale her face. He's got years of potential face-inhaling to make up for, here.

He slides his hands down over her ass, hiking her skirt up until he can feel the warm curve of skin and the lacy edge of her panties. She squirms against his hips. If he ever thought he'd be here in the ladies' room of Barry's, tangled up and hard, with anybody, he never would have guessed, never would have dreamed, that it would be Stella.

He laughs, brings his hand forward and cups her perfect face because he just wants to look at it. "I never, ever thought..."

She lifts her eyebrow. "That you'd make it with a woman?"

He strokes the round curve of her jaw with his thumb. "That I'd make it with my best friend."


End file.
